


a tragedy starting to happen

by pageleaf



Category: A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Captain America: The First Avenger fusion, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 16:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7322971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pageleaf/pseuds/pageleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Gene.” Finny’s voice is low and serious. “Gene, look at me.”</p><p>Gene looks at him.</p><p>“Do I look like I’m limping?”</p><p>Gene shakes his head.</p><p>“Look at my uniform, Gene. Don’t you recognize it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a tragedy starting to happen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grim_lupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/gifts).



> at the end of this fic, one of the main characters is presumed dead. however, there's a reason i didn't tag this with "major character death." if you need more details than that, they're in the notes at the end!
> 
> title is from "red" by elbow, which has been my ultimate gene/finny song since the ninth grade
> 
> thanks, as always, to grim_lupine for beta-ing/enabling. special thanks this time for being my ASP mentor :)

The air in the Alps is cold and sharp, like crystal. It makes Gene think so crisply that it feels like the world around him is moving in slow motion. He flexes his muscles, and tries not to think about the fact that he’s been awake for twenty-four hours but doesn’t feel tired. He tries not to think about how he scraped his shin twenty minutes ago and it’s already healed. He picks up his gun, and goes to find someone else to fight, and thinks of something, anything else.

 

The first time Gene hears the name “Captain America,” he’s too distracted to pay attention. His tentmates have just found Finny’s shirt, faded but still noticeably pink, sleeve slightly peeking out from his bag like something dirty.

“Is this...pink?”

Gene freezes, turns around. “What are you doing? Why are you looking through my bag?”

Someone laughs. “Forget pink, this is a dress shirt. Looks high quality. Why do you have it out here?”

Mortifyingly, Gene feels himself blush.

Laughter again, more raucous this time.

“What was it, a gift from a girl? Or from your mother?”

Gene scowls, but seizes at the excuse. “A girl. Are you done, now?”

He must look angry enough, because the laughter stops. “Gene, you didn’t say you had a girl.” He finds the shirt being handed back to him.

He stuffs it under his pillow. “I don’t.”

The rest of them are very quiet as Gene crawls into his bedroll. Probably trying to figure out what he meant—probably imagining the worst. He lets them. It’s not like they’ll ever find out about Finny, anyway.

As he goes to sleep, he hears them start talking about the newest bit of entertainment—something about a star-spangled man.

 

Gene lost sight of Finny somewhere in the chaos, but his shield is lying there on the floor, forlorn. Gene picks it up with nerveless fingers, fumbles the grip, drops it, catches it, holds on. He feels like a fraud. He thinks again of Finny’s shirt, at Devon, thinks of putting it on and looking in the mirror while Finny sat with a broken leg in his parents’ home, alone. Because of Gene.

There’s a man sneaking up behind him quietly, so quietly. Gene really shouldn’t be able to hear that.

He grips the shield tighter with one hand, raises his gun with the other, whirls around, and shoots.

 

Gene doesn’t think again of Captain America until later, when a man comes charging into the lab where he’s held. He unbuckles the restraints on Gene’s arms and legs, and leans in, saying something inaudible.

No, wait: he’s saying “Gene. Gene, it’s me.” His voice—

“ _Finny_?” Gene croaks, bolting upright. God, everything hurts.

But Finny grins at him, bright and shining, and it takes the pain away in a heartbeat.

Gene feels dread swell up cold in his chest.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses. “You can’t be here! It’s not safe for you, your leg—”

“Gene.” Finny’s voice is low and serious. “Gene, look at me.”

Gene looks at him.

“Do I look like I’m limping?”

Gene shakes his head.

“Look at my uniform, Gene. Don’t you recognize it?”

 

Someone’s knife grazes his shield arm, but Gene doesn’t even flinch, just follows through with his swing and knocks the guy out with the shield. The guy drops.

Through the haze of adrenaline, Gene hears Finny call his name. He spins around and throws the shield like a frisbee in the direction of the sound. As he watches Finny reach out for the incoming shield, Gene catches sight of his own outstretched arm.

The knife must have cut through his jacket, because there’s a neat tear in the fabric. Through it, Gene sees a flash of pink.

 

“This is my shirt,” Finny says, from behind him.

Gene freezes, feeling a terrible sense of deja vu. Turns around to see Finny rifling through his bag.

“Finny, what the hell.”

Finny looks at him, guileless. “What, are you keeping secrets? Why can’t I look?”

Gene scowls, and turns away. “Yeah, it’s your shirt.”

He can hear Finny’s smile. “You took it. I thought I lost it, that last year at Devon, but no. You took it.”

Gene exhales. “I took it,” he agrees.

There’s a slight rustling—probably Finny pulling the shirt out of the bag—and then:

“Do you think it’d still fit me?”

Something like panic flares in Gene’s chest, and he turns around again. “You want it back?”

Finny looks at him funny. “I mean, it was one of my favorite shirts.”

 _Mine too_ , Gene doesn’t say, because that would be too obvious, even for him. “It might still fit you,” he says, instead.

A moment of silence, and then Finny laughs. “No it wouldn’t. It’s been too long, and besides.” He gestures at his serum-enhanced body, and doesn’t need to say anything else.

“You can still have it, if you want,” Gene says, because he figures he can give up a shirt since he has Finny back, now. Then he feels like an idiot, acting like he’s doing Finny a favor by offering him his own shirt.

Finny hums in thought, and then says, “No, I bet it would still fit you. You’re still scrawny.”

“Gee, thanks,” Gene says, dry.

Finny crumples up the shirt and throws it to him, and Gene catches it, shoving it under his pillow.

 

The shield had felt so heavy when Gene held it, but Finny uses it like an extension of his arm. As always, everything Finny does is athletic and natural and effortless. Gene almost expects to see Finny grinning as he fights, just like he did when they played blitzball.

But there’s no smile, because Finny has grown up since then. It’s been over half a decade; of course he’s grown up.

Gene looks at Finny and feels his chest tighten and panics. Is this the old jealousy, coming back to haunt him? Is Gene still that small, angry teenage boy who pushed his best friend out of a tree?

Finny has grown up, but has Gene?

He hears Finny call his name again, and it’s like something inside him stands to attention at the sound. Gene relaxes. Not jealousy, then. Not jealousy at all.

 

Quickly, Gene realizes some of the other men are avoiding Finny, shunning him even. Finny is not used to being shunned. Even with his leg injured permanently (or so they thought), Finny had a magnetic personality, and a smile bright enough to attract people like a lighthouse calling ships to shore.

Now, with his perfect body and that same goddamn smile, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have the soldiers eating out of the palm of his hand like the boys back at school.

So Gene asks a friend, and the response he gets is:

“You’re different around him.”

_What?_

“Different how?”

“You’re quieter, you don’t—laugh or swear or _talk_ as much. It’s like this Finny guy is trying to keep you in his shadow, and I don’t like it. Just because he’s Captain America doesn’t mean—”

Gene laughs, cutting him off. Laughs loudly, laughs so he doesn’t cry. Because how does he explain this? How does he explain that it’s not that he’s different around Finny, it’s that he’s finally himself again? How does he explain that he’s been pretending this whole time to be someone else? How does he explain that now that Finny is here, Gene no longer has any shoes to fill?

 

Idiotically, Gene is standing next to the door when the train takes a sharp bend. He wishes he could say he tried to stay upright, but in reality he tumbled instantly to the ground and skidded out the door, only grabbing the rail at the last second.

“Fuck,” he gasps out, and holds on tight with both hands.

Somewhere, distantly, he hears Finny yelling, “Gene— _Gene_!”

Gene closes his eyes and tries not to think about falling.

Instead he thinks about how when Finny told him about this mission, the first thing Gene said was an inane, “It’ll be cold.”

Finny just laughed, and said, “Better layer up,” pressing something into Gene’s hand.

After he left, Gene looked down. It was Finny’s shirt, neatly folded.

He thinks about that, and then he thinks about how he wanted to run after Finny, pull him around to face him, and kiss him, kiss that bright, blinding smile. He wanted it, _wants_ it so badly. He might never get it.

His thoughts are going so fast, and the air is so cold, and in excruciating slow motion, he feels his grip on the rail start to slip.

 

 

“ _Gene_!” Finny yells, leaning out of the train door, arm outstretched. “Gene, grab my hand, I’ve got you!”

Gene grabs his hand, fumbles, misses, grabs for it again, catches hold. He lets himself be pulled up into the relative safety of the train, and sobs out a relieved breath. He does not think about falling.

Finny laughs breathlessly, and says, “I thought I was going to lose you.”

Gene stares at him, and kisses his smile until it grows wider beneath his lips. He recognizes, embraces that feeling in his chest, that feeling he used to think was jealousy. He laughs at his stupid teenage self, and thanks god that he didn’t lose this.

Finny pulls back from the kiss, and opens his mouth, still laughing, to say something.

The train hits another bump and they stumble. It goes around another bend.

Finny flails, trying to catch his balance, and Gene lunges for the front of his coat. He misses, and yells in terror, and _reaches_ , because he can’t, not this, _not this again_ —

But he misses.

And Finny falls.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fusion with captain america: the first avenger, so it's not-quite-character-death in the same way that bucky is not-quite-dead at the end of that movie. finny falls from the train at the end of this fic and is presumed dead. in my mind, in the same way as mcu captain america, he is found off screen and survives to become the winter soldier. but that's a story for another time ;)


End file.
